Your Kids Will (Probably) Live to 100

Everyone has those moments that cause us to take a step back and reflect on our mortality. When we’re young, we want nothing more than to be old. Yet, at some point, we stop looking to the future to get older and start reminiscing on the past. For our entire lives, it seems like getting older was inevitable. However, with leaders like Bryan Johnson, Peter Attia, and David Sinclair, that no longer seems like the case. Cutting edge research and experimentation has shown that we are on the edge of a new era of human longevity. With this new world we’re entering into, what do we need to do to prepare?

Health > Wealth

A popular phrase that gets tossed around is to prioritize health over wealth, yet it seems like as a society no one obeys that phrase. We may be working more than ever, but few people seem to be making strides towards taking care of their health. It’s become acceptable and expected that we all complain about our health as we grow to have more aches and pains. Some of the most fascinating people to follow are those who counter this cultural phenomenon.

Bryan Johnson, a more interesting and less erratic Elon Musk, has decided to dedicate his life to making himself younger. He’s put out all his information out publicly for you to check out below, but he’s been making absolutely insane progress.

He’s spent over $2,000,000 in the last year on his body and making himself younger. Depending on the measurement, he’s in the 99th percentile of 18 year old’s (he’s currently 45, about to turn 46). He’s drawn a lot of criticism on the internet for some of the insane lengths he’s going to, but you cannot fault a man for trying. You and I don’t have $2,000,000 to spend on our body, but there are many simple things we can do to improve our own health.

• Workout - “The best workout is the one you’ll actually do”.

  • It doesn’t really matter what workout you focus on. Lifting weights, calisthenics, yoga, basketball, swimming etc. Focus on what you enjoy and what you can stick to for months and years.

• Diet - “Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables”

  • One of my keystones for diet has been Michael Pollen’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. Diet and nutrition is one of those internet topics that is in utter disarray. It is difficult to get a clear and accurate focus on what works and what is helpful. Pollen’s book is short and pinpoint the majority of all health nutrition advice. Read it and you’ll be set.

• Sleep - “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”

  • Matthew Walker, a professor of Neuroscience and sleep at UC Berkeley, wrote the preeminent pop science book about sleep. You can read it or check out Andrew Huberman’s excellent post on tools to improve your sleep.

A framework that can help you get started is figuring out your goals and working backwards from there. You may not want to enter yourself into a powerlifting competition and that’s fine. My personal fitness goal is to never have my body be the limiting factor when spending time with the people I love. That includes future children and/or grandchildren. You have to spend time and energy to find yours and then work backwards from there.

Picking Up Your Grandchildren’s Check

I recently got to spend a few days with my grandfather and it was the best. We would go out to eat almost every day and just try to have a plethora of different cuisines. From hotpot to Mediterranean to sushi, he picked up the tab, every single time. One of the things that you may not plan for (or at least I never thought about it) is how expectations change once you get older. Expectations around money are sticky and can lead to a lot of unspoken resentment. Even as my family and I tried to pay for meals, he would fight over the check, saying “It’s the grandfather getting to treat his grandchildren.”

This obviously has little to do with actual retirement. Retirement is a relatively new phenomenon, correlated with the rise in life expectancy. It used to be that people would work until they died. Now we’re living long enough that we can take a few years off before we die. However, very few people are actually saving up enough to retire and that’s a scary thought. Managing money is a skill that we all need help with and isn’t taught much in school.

For all things personal finance, I would check out Ramit Sethi as he give some of the clearest and actionable advice for you to move forward. The best piece of knowledge that I can give? Start now and learn later. Invest in index funds with low fees. Compounding interest only works when you give it the uninterrupted time to grow.

So Now What?

Assuming you have your health and wealth in order and you or your kids will live to 100 or beyond, what now? It’s a scary thought, contemplating our own mortality. To me, part of the reason why longevity is such a huge focus for the rich and powerful is an escape from an inescapable problem.

In one of my favorite books, Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman writes an anti-productivity book. Productivity culture is ultimately about getting more done with less time, which in turn is about trying to make the most out of life. The problem is there’s always more that you could be doing. Burkeman cuts through the noise and throws out the traditional productivity advice for some genuine help, which I interpret like this. You will die. It’ll come faster than you think. So you should figure out what your life should look like. When we obsess over the small and minute details, we miss the forest for the trees.

You can have the healthiest diet, but if you never enjoy a meal out with friends, what’s the point? You can save as much money as you can for retirement, but if you never spend it, what’s the point? Peter Attia brings this up in the last chapter of Outlive, citing the importance of mental and emotional health. What makes humans happy? Relationships, being a part of a community and having a sense of purpose. It might look different from person to person, but I encourage you to find that. I’ve found that in my own way, through a local church that I’m involved with, and I can strongly say it’s what makes life meaningful. You can and should take steps to extend your life/health span, but remember to also focus on what’s important.